This guidance was first produced in 2008 and has been refreshed as part of a project funded by the Regional Improvement and Efficiency Partnership to improve partnership working in the Leicester, Leicestershire and Rutland sub-region.

The economic climate means that the pressure on public services is greater than ever.  In a context of reduced budgets and strained resources, public services must deliver better outcomes, greater efficiencies, and reshaped services to meet the needs of citizens.  Effective partnership working will be the means through which these difficult objectives are achieved.

Partnership working is not easy, and at worst can be a drain on resources and adversely affect outcomes for citizens.  The purpose of this guidance is to provide an introduction to the issues and challenges encountered in partnership working.  The guidance is broadly split in to two component parts.

• The first section contains new material, providing an introduction to partnership working, highlighting its benefits (and pitfalls), and attempting to identify what makes a partnership effective.  It is intended that the guidance will be used in conjunction with the recently developed Partnership Self-Assessment Tool which can be used by new partnerships as a development framework, and as a mechanism for existing partnerships to reflect on their activity.
• The second section contains practical advice in relation to establishing a partnership, specifically focussing on Partnership Agreements.

This guidance is not intended to be a definitive guide to partnership working, and we would encourage wider reading on the subject.  In light of this, we have compiled a directory of web based partnership information covering a range of topics including best practice, self-assessment, governance, and legislation.

If you feel we can improve the information contained in this document, or others associated with it, please let us know